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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23764135">(re)generate</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard'>draculard</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Watchmen - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Body Horror, Bullying, Child Abandonment, Child Abuse, Child Death, Child Neglect, Deformities due to injuries, Graphic Description, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Major Character Injury, Pre-Slash, Scars, Severe Trauma, Temporary Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:59:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,764</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23764135</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Walter dies. Walter wakes up again. Walter dies. Walter wakes up again.</p><p>He learns to deal with the disorientation that comes with every regeneration; he never learns to deal with the physical reminders that only he can see.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dan Dreiberg/Rorschach</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>(re)generate</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He’s a baby the first time it happens. He’s nine months old and Sylvia is boiling water on a faulty stove which will break entirely in two years. She plans to make pasta, not because she particularly likes it, but because it’s cheap and filling and you can eat it for days. Even the baby can eat it, because it’s soft. Two birds, one stone. </p><p>But then the baby starts crying. It’s late December in New York; their apartment is cold, the only heat coming from Sylvia’s stovetop. The baby’s crib is next to the window, which is broken; Sylvia has fixed it temporarily by taping cardboard over the hole.</p><p>So she knows why the baby is crying, but that doesn’t help. Not when it seems like the baby’s been crying all winter. Not when it seems like the baby’s been crying nonstop since March.</p><p>She grabs baby Walter. She holds him like a careless child might hold a doll, not like a mother holds her baby. She brings him to the kitchen, where it’s warm.</p><p>To the water, which is already bubbling.</p><p>She sticks his head into the boiling pot.</p><hr/><p>She disposes of the body, of course. She’s not crying — she doesn’t feel anything, really, as she bundles it up in a trash bag and throws it down the chute. The baby’s body tumbles against the metal walls, striking the sides now and then as it falls. She hears the thump as it hits the garbage heap.</p><p>Her chin is trembling as she returns to her apartment, but in the end, she doesn’t cry. All she does is pour out the water and fill the pot again. She doesn’t clean the gunky residue — sloughed skin, clotted blood, wisps of hair — off the sides.</p><p>Two days later, the policeman comes, carrying a purple-faced, red-haired, underweight baby in his arms. Ten years after that, Dan Dreiberg’s parents will tell him the story of the day they opened their door in late December and found a nine-month-old infant waiting on the front step.</p><p>“He was all wrapped up in a garbage bag,” his father says. “But he was perfectly healthy; a little thin and a lot cold, that’s all. He was wearing cloth diapers, and his mom’s name was sewn into them, so the police brought him home right away, from what I hear.”</p><p>That same day, ten years old, Walter hides in the bathroom while Sylvia sees to a man in the bedroom they share. He sits on the edge of the tub and glances at the mirror — quick glances, out of the corner of his eye. What he sees there always troubles him.</p><p>Ruptured blisters on his forehead. Skin peeling from his cheeks. Empty eye sockets, twisted lips, teeth visible through a melted cheek. </p><p>He doesn’t like it.</p><p>He has to force himself to look away.</p><hr/><p>By the time he’s an adult, he looks in the mirror and sees a skull so fractured it looks — and sometimes feels —  like loose gravel beneath his skin; he sees the same melted cheek that’s been there all his life, the teeth showing through his skin; when his clothes are off, he sees a wound bisecting his abdomen that’s gaping and bloodless at first, but knits itself together over time until it’s just a scar.</p><p>It’s better with the mask on. He can’t see anything, then.</p><p>What he hates worse than his reflection is that damned house. It’s familiar to him at age ten when one of Sylvia’s customers pushes him down the stairs of their apartment building. He wakes up with his skull still aching on the doorstep of a big house in a nice neighborhood — an unfamiliar neighborhood. </p><p>He gets to his feet; his clothes are extra dirty from lying on the ground. He runs a hand through already-messy hair, feels the smoothness of his skull beneath the skin. Unbroken. Completely whole. </p><p>He squints at the numbers next to the door and decides to remember them.</p><p>Four years later, he does. He’s smaller than the other boys at the group home, but he fights viciously. He’s already half-dead by the time they drag him away from the empty play-yard where the children are allowed to kick a ball around after school. He’s unconscious when one of them drops him onto the train tracks; his eyelids flutter at the rumbling sound of the wheels, at the vibration beneath him, at the scream of the whistle, but he doesn’t wake.</p><p>Then, suddenly, he’s on the doorstep again. He hears yelling inside; a voice that seems somehow familiar. He puts a hand over his aching stomach and gazes up at the numbers next to the door. They’re the same.</p><p>He hates that house, Walter decides, fingers clenching over unharmed skin. He relishes the pain there; he wishes it were worse; wishes it were real.</p><p>He never wants to see that house again.</p><hr/><p>Later on, looking at his Face in the mirror, Walter won’t be able to explain why he slipped into the owlship and watched a masked vigilante he’d never seen before stop the riots all on his own. He’s certain of only one thing: that <em> he </em> made the decision, not Rorschach. And as he watches Nite Owl stop the violence, his mind is blank, like a man deep in meditation or lost in prayer.</p><p>The gears only start turning again when Nite Owl re-enters the ship. Walter doesn’t know what he’s going to say until he says it.</p><p>And suddenly, he has a partner. And with someone watching his back now, there are a lot fewer incidents, a lot fewer scars.</p><p>Still, it happens from time to time.</p><p>A criminal with a lot of friends and a gun in his pocket finds him in an alleyway alone, and suddenly Rorschach is waking up on the doorstep of that same familiar house. He can feel the bullet lodged in his heart, but it’s a phantom pain. When he looks down at his chest later, at home, he sees nothing there; when he looks in the mirror, he sees the wound, still open, still bleeding.</p><p>A pudgy reverend, dozens of dead bodies, a great fire, and Rorschach wakes up on the doorstep again, his skin still tingling. It feels for a moment like his mask has melted onto his face.</p><p>He doesn’t look in the mirror for a long while out of that. He gets a glimpse of it when he’s brushing his teeth — the black and white splotches burned into his skin, <em> Walter’s </em> skin — and vomits into the sink. He’s still thinking about that a week later when he’s on Archimedes with Nite Owl after a long night on patrol.</p><p>“Lunch?” Nite Owl asks.</p><p>Sitting in the copilot’s seat, Rorschach doesn’t answer for a moment. This has become common for them. Periodically, Nite Owl suggests they catch a bite to eat; their routine is for Rorschach to say no, for Nite Owl to persist, for Rorschach to acquiesce only when Nite Owl says he’ll cover the bill. They play it off casually. Both of them know Rorschach doesn’t have the money. </p><p>“Yes,” says Rorschach finally, voice rough. He doesn’t bother going through the charade this time. He’s thinking about his face in the mirror.</p><p>He’s pulled out of his thoughts only when he realizes Nite Owl isn’t following the script, either. They’ve agreed on lunch, yet Nite Owl is steering Archimedes toward the owl cave; silently, Rorschach watches as the city disappears, replaced by the dark tunnels leading to Nite Owl’s lair.</p><p>He stays silent right up until the ship is docked. Then, still saying nothing, he turns to Nite Owl and cocks his head.</p><p>Nite Owl is nervous. Rorschach can tell. He watches his partner wipe his hands on his thighs — a futile gesture, since he’s wearing gloves, but a telling one. Nite Owl doesn’t return Rorschach’s gaze; instead, he stares out the windshield at his own workshop, his jaw tight.</p><p>Slowly, he reaches up and removes his mask.</p><p>He turns to Rorschach.</p><p>He tries to smile.</p><p>“I’m Dan,” he says. His voice comes out weak and scratchy, so he stops, clears his throat. “Dan Dreiberg. I, uh … well, I figured maybe we could have lunch here today, if that’s okay with you. Instead of going out.”</p><p>Rorschach knows the ink blots on his face are swirling. A few seconds tick by. He stares at Daniel’s face, memorizing it, cataloguing the soft eyes, the weak chin, the shaky smile. Not the type of face that inspires confidence. Definitely better with the mask.</p><p>“No,” says Rorschach.</p><p>Immediately, Daniel’s face becomes a bit more firm, a little more appealing. “Aw, come on, man,” he says, exasperated. “I’m not saying you gotta take <em> your </em> mask off.”</p><p>Rorschach makes an affronted noise. He’s not pleased that Daniel even considered that an option.</p><p>“I’m just saying come have lunch with me,” Daniel says. He gestures toward the owl cave, the familiar workshop, the anonymous lab where Rorschach feels more or less at ease. “My kitchen’s right up there, right up those stairs. I’ve got coffee, sandwiches, whatever. You know, other partners eat together all the time, right? Like, they know each other’s names and faces and they hang out on weekends and drink beer? Like friends?”</p><p>Rorschach says nothing. Beneath his face, he’s scowling at the stairs, deep in thought.</p><p>He can eat with his face on. He’s done it before in front of Daniel, dozens of times. The location is the only thing that’s changed, and it’s not <em> his </em> house they’re eating in, not his name being revealed.</p><p>It’s not ideal, obviously. But, at least in theory, there’s no harm.</p><p>“Fine,” Rorschach says.</p><p>He eats with Daniel. He peels his face up so it rests just above the tip of his nose. He stays; he chats a while, or rather he nods and grunts from time to time while Daniel carries the conversation. The house unnerves him; the walls seem to shrink and expand around him; there’s a high-pitched buzzing noise in his left ear.</p><p>Conversation peters out after thirty minutes. Daniel isn’t even done eating yet, but Rorschach knows innately that it’s time to go. He doesn’t say goodbye; he stands and leaves his dirty dishes on Daniel’s kitchen table, and he finds the front door on his own.</p><p>Opens it. Steps outside. Closes it. Turns around.</p><p>Sees the numbers. Recognizes them; recites them under his breath. Stares a little longer at the door he always wakes up right in front of after he dies.</p><p>“Hurm,” he says, and walks away. </p>
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